What is the difference between SAP Netweaver Gateway and SAP JCo Adapters ?
SAP Netweaver Gateway Adapter:
IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation applications can communicate with SAP Netweaver Gateway back-end services by using SAP adapters. Using HTTP rest calls and the OData protocol, applications can remotely create, retrieve, update, and delete entities through the adapter.
No additional middleware required to communicate with SAP system.
SAP JCo Adapter:
The SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo) is a middleware component that enables the development of SAP-compatible components and applications in Java.
Correct me if I am wrong.
The Service Discovery for SAP NetWeaver support enables the ability to codelessly generate MFP Adapters through exploring SAP sources and altering response data from SAP, through their Gateway product. Gateway is an extra layer of SAP middleware. For clients that have Gateway as part of their topology, this is a solid tool for generating custom mobile services.
The MFP JCo adapter provides support for writing custom implementation of service creation. This solution requires custom coding, using the JCo APIs, but is available for all SAP installations.
Summary, they are different animals that solve the same problem, in dramatically different way. Hope this helps.
Related
We are trying to setup Linked Service for the SAP ECC connection within the Azure Data Factory. One of the required properties is "URL" which we are not sure how to format it (please see the attached screenshot). Is this an SAP server name? We need to connect multiple tables/views (approx. 150 of them). Do we need to use separate URL for each table/view?
Is this an SAP server name?
At the place of URL, we need to enter the URL of the SAP ECC OData service.
You must expose the SAP ECC entities via OData services through SAP Gateway in order to utilize this connector or linked service for SAP ECC.
For exposing SAP ECC data through OData services Building a service is a fairly common use case for SAP NetWeaver Gateway. With the TCODE SICF you to instantly activate the OData service. The objects that must be exposed can also be configured.
see this step-by-step guidance to build an OData Service blog by Volker Drees.
Example (SAP ECC OData URL):
http://eccsvrname:8000/sap/opu/odata/sap/zgw100_dd02l_so_srv/
Reference: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/connector-sap-ecc?tabs=data-factory
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Do they each have a specific purpose? Is one better suited than the other for a particular task?
They are two different distributions and serve different purposes.
API Gateway- It has specific features to communicate to Anypoint Platform to manage APIs, apply runtime policies, send analytics, track APIs.
Task- For deploying your proxy API Application
Mule Server- Mule server is the runtime you use for your integrations.
Task- For deploying your actual implementation API Application
Since Mule runtime version v3.8.0, both are one and the same. This means that since that version, the runtime is shipped with API Gateway capabilities, and there is no more API Gateway specific distributions released. To enable API Gateway capabilities, if you have the correct entitlement, you only need to specify your organization credentials or environment credentials (this last, it is only applicable to Mule 4 or newer).
API Gateway capabilities are the only ones who "know" how to apply/un-apply Anypoint Policies and generate Analytics info, among other things.
For runtimes released before v3.8.0, the only way to leverage those capabilities was to use API Gateway distribution. For example, API Gateway v2.x is based on Mule runtime v3.7.x.
I have a query on a design hope you guys can clarify my doubt.
I have a specific requirement in which Mule is used just to expose the back end services in API gateway, backend services are written in Spring boot and other technology, all these services needs to be exposed in API gateway.
Is this a good practice to do that and if yes how can we do that?
I saw that in API manager we can create proxy layer on top of the services developed in Mule but is it possible to create proxies for the services developed in different technologies?
Absolutely ... For creating proxy service, it doesn't matter what type of technology does the backend service have.
It can create a proxy layer for any kind of backend service available either locally, in cloud or other remote location till the service url is accessible.
This proxy will create an additional layer hiding the actual url to the external world.
it doesn't matter what technology you are using for development as long as those are REST services and accessible to the cloudhub application. You can deploy those on-premise and can integrate your local runtime with cloudhub. Also, mule supports spring projects and you can directly configure your spring project/details inside mule.
I am experimenting with Mule API management these days. What I come to know is we can deploy our API to one of these:
A Mule Runtime
An API Gateway
In the documentation, it is said that we should go with option 1 when we want to separate out the implementation of your API from the orchestration. What does it mean?
Can any one please explain in detail?
Policy management from API Platform and analytics generation can be achieved only by using a correctly configured API Gateway, which is a superset of Mule EE (current version is API Gateway 2.1.0 which contains Mule EE 3.7.2).
Depending on your architecture you may have different solutions.
For example:
Proxy running on API Gateway, implementation API running somewhere
else (eg. Mule EE/CE, Tomcat, cobol server, etc)
Proxy and implementation API running on the same API Gateway
Implementation API
managed directly from API Platform without using the autogenerated
proxies.
HTH :-)
Not exactly sure what they mean there, because on this page: https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/current/API+Gateway they also mention this:
Note that the API Gateway, because it acts as an orchestration layer
for services and APIs implemented elsewhere, is technology-agnostic.
You can proxy non-Mule services or APIs of any kind, as long as they
expose HTTP/HTTPS, VM, Jetty, or APIkit Router endpoints. You can also
proxy APIs that you design and build with API Designer and APIkit to
the API Gateway to separate the orchestration from the implementation
of those APIs.
So both methods technically allow you to separate API from orchestration, as your API gateway application could simply proxy another Mule application elsewhere that performs the orchestration. But my understanding of the two options are:
The API gateway is a limited offering that allows you to use a subset of Mule's connectors, transports and modules such as ApiKit and HTTP, it allows you to expose and API then use http to connect to whatever backend systems you want as a proxy and perform the orchestration in the API layer.
By using the Mule runtime operation, it gives you much more flexibility and allows you to compose as many applications as you want using the full range of connectors etc. and separate out the different aspects of your applications into as many layers as you want as separately deployable entities that you can deploy to on-premise standalone instances or Cloudhub etc.
#Ryan answer is more or less on the mark, however if you do choose the Mule ESB offering you will loose out on the API Management and governance functionality that API gateway provides OOTB.
These include
Lets you enforce runtime policies and collect data for analytics
Applies policies to APIs or endpoints around security, throttling,
rate limiting, and more
Extends PingFederate to serve as identity management and OAuth
provider for your APIs
Lets you require or restrict certain behaviors in a few simple steps
Lets you add or remove policies at runtime with no API downtime
Manages access to your API by issuing contract keys
Monitors the API to confirm it is meeting all contract terms
Ensures compliance with service level agreements (SLAs)
In my opinion go with API Gateway/Manager if your API will be consumed my third party developers with whom you might not have too many interactions (think public API's) else Mule ESB should be good.
You should be able to migrate from Mule ESB to API Manager (and vice versa) also easily if you need to, so I do not think you will get locked into your decision
PS: Content copied from here
I just curious, why we need worklight adapter to communicate with the database? Why not can't using direct ajax? Last time I'm using direct ajax it's not working at all. After I switch to worklight adapter it's running like charm? No problem at all. Why?
You did not provide any specific details about your scenario, like Where is that backend system located, if there is any security involved, what is the topology, etc... so why it's not working with AJAX is impossible to answer.
As for why use Worklight adapters, read:
http://javatechig.com/cross-platform/ibm-worklight/how-to-create-a-http-adapter-in-ibm-worlight
Adapters provide templated (adapter types) connectivity settings to various backend systems - HTTP, SOAP, SQL, JMS and so on
Adapters provide a means to auto-generate an adapter for WSDL and sap web services
Adapters can also be pure Java JAX-RS web apps, allow far greater flexibility and functionality (in MFP 7.0)
You must use Worklight adapters if you intend on using the unified push notifications support
Adapters must be used if you intend to utilize any of the Worklight security features (adapter-based, custom login module, device provisioning, custom provisioning and so on)
and so on